Dafna
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  Dafna  Dafna | |
| Coordinates:33°13′48″N35°38′19″E / 33.23000°N 35.63861°E /33.23000; 35.63861 | |
| Country |  Israel |
| District | Northern |
| Council | Upper Galilee |
| Affiliation | Kibbutz Movement |
| Founded | 3 May 1939 |
| Founded by | Polish andLithuanianHabonim Dror members |
| Population (2023) | 1,077[1] |
| Website | www.dafna.org.il |
Dafna (Hebrew:דפנה) is akibbutz in theUpper Galilee in northernIsrael. Located seven kilometres east ofKiryat Shmona and surrounded by three streams of theDan River, it falls under the jurisdiction ofUpper Galilee Regional Council. In 2023 it had a population of 1,077.[1]
Dafna was founded on 3 May 1939 as aTower and Stockade settlement, the first such settlement in the northernHula Valley. Dafna,Beit Hillel,She'ar Yashuv andDan were known as the "Ussishkin Fortresses", named afterMenahem Ussishkin.
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EarlyRoman pottery fragments have been found in an excavation in Dafna.[2] A place called Daphne was mentioned in this vicinity byJosephus.[3]
Edward Robinson, who visited in 1852, identified Daphne with a "low mound of rubbish with cut stones, evidently the remains of a former town" called Difneh that he encountered while riding south fromTel el-Qadi toMansura.[3] He noted that the land for some distance south was called Ard Difneh.[3]
TheSurvey of Western Palestine identified Daphne with Khirbet Dufnah, meaning "the ruin of Daphne (oleander)".[4][5][6]
An Arab settlement was founded sometime between 1858 and 1878.[7] Difnah was listed as a village by theMandate government in 1924.[8] At the time of the1931 census, Dafna had 66 occupied houses and a population of 318 Muslims and one Christian.[9] At the beginning of 1939, the village was pillaged by bedouin, causing most of the population to leave.[10] The land was soon purchased by theJewish National Fund.[10] The JNF was represented in the negotiations by the same man, Kamel Hussein, who had earlier led the raid onTel-Hai in whichJosef Trumpeldor was killed.[10]
The original Jewish residents were immigrants mostly fromPoland andLithuania.[11] By the1944/45 statistics, Dafna had a population of 380 Jews[12] with a total land area of 2,663 dunams, of which Jews owned 2,189 dunams.[13] Of this, a total of 2,385dunams of land were irrigated or used for plantations, 5 dunums were used for cereals;[14] while 50 dunams were classified as built-up (or Urban) area.[15]
In 1947, it had a population of 600.[11] During early 1947 Palmach OfficerMoshe Kelman was ordered by theHaganah High Command to supervise the execution and burial of a Jew accused of collaborating with the British. The execution took place at Kibbutz Dafna.[16][17]
After the1948 Palestine war, Dafna took over part of the land belonging to the newly depopulatedPalestinian village ofAl-Sanbariyya.[18]
According to a 1949 book by theJewish National Fund, Dafna along with other border settlements ofDan andKfar Szold held off theSyrian andLebanese forces during the1948 Arab-Israeli war. However, the settlement was often bombarded and was said to have suffered heavy damage.[11]
The fictional kibbutz Gan Dafna, its name presumably a nod to the real-life kibbutz Dafna, figures prominently inLeon Uris's bookExodus, as the hometown of the protagonist Ari Ben Caanan.
On 4 February 1997, at approximately 19:00, two "Yasur" Sikorsky CH 53 helicopters carrying 73 soldiers and loaded with ammunition collided in mid-air overShe'ar Yashuv. One of the helicopters smashed into an open field near the cemetery of Dafna.[19] It is believed that this accident increased the pressure on theIDF to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, finally done in May 2000.[20]
During theGaza war, northern Israeli border communities, including Dafna, faced targeted attacks byHezbollah andPalestinian factions based inLebanon, and were evacuated.[21] On July 21, 2024, a Hezbollah rocket attack damaged a school, but there were no casualties.[22]
| Climate data for Dafna (1991-2020) | |||||||||||||
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| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 27.5 (81.5) | 30.9 (87.6) | 36.9 (98.4) | 40.4 (104.7) | 42.5 (108.5) | 44.8 (112.6) | 44.1 (111.4) | 46.9 (116.4) | 46.8 (116.2) | 44.5 (112.1) | 35.2 (95.4) | 31.5 (88.7) | 46.9 (116.4) |
| Mean daily maximum °C (°F) | 17.0 (62.6) | 18.5 (65.3) | 22.1 (71.8) | 26.3 (79.3) | 30.6 (87.1) | 33.1 (91.6) | 34.9 (94.8) | 35.3 (95.5) | 34.1 (93.4) | 31.1 (88.0) | 24.7 (76.5) | 18.9 (66.0) | 27.2 (81.0) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | 12.0 (53.6) | 13.1 (55.6) | 15.8 (60.4) | 19.3 (66.7) | 23.2 (73.8) | 26.0 (78.8) | 28.1 (82.6) | 28.7 (83.7) | 27.1 (80.8) | 24.0 (75.2) | 18.5 (65.3) | 13.7 (56.7) | 20.8 (69.4) |
| Mean daily minimum °C (°F) | 7.0 (44.6) | 7.5 (45.5) | 9.5 (49.1) | 12.2 (54.0) | 15.7 (60.3) | 18.8 (65.8) | 21.3 (70.3) | 22.1 (71.8) | 20.0 (68.0) | 16.8 (62.2) | 12.3 (54.1) | 8.4 (47.1) | 14.3 (57.7) |
| Record low °C (°F) | −2.9 (26.8) | −1.2 (29.8) | 0.4 (32.7) | 0.2 (32.4) | 8.4 (47.1) | 12.2 (54.0) | 15.4 (59.7) | 16.1 (61.0) | 12.2 (54.0) | 6.8 (44.2) | 1.7 (35.1) | −0.6 (30.9) | −2.9 (26.8) |
| Source:NOAA[23] | |||||||||||||
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